The accusative of purpose or motive, traditionally المفعول لأجله or المفعول له, is a maṣdar that explains why an intentional action was performed: وقفت احترامًا للمعلمة “I stood out of respect for the teacher.” The action is وقفت, while احترامًا names the actor's motive. English often uses to + verb, because of, out of, or for, so the correct Arabic choice depends on meaning rather than on one English form.
The bare accusative is compact and characteristically formal. It works best when the reason is tightly integrated with the event: the same participant experiences or adopts the motive, and the motive belongs to the same occasion as the action. Contemporary MSA frequently prefers explicit لـ, من أجل, بسبب, or a purpose clause, especially when the “purpose” is a practical goal rather than an inner motive, when the agents differ, or when the nominal relation could be misread.
A motive packaged as a noun
The verbal predicate is the governor of the accusative maṣdar. That maṣdar does not receive tense or mood; it is a case-bearing noun. In the clearest pattern it is indefinite, abstract, and accusative, and it names an emotion, intention, concern, or reason that motivates the same agent's deliberate act.
وقفت الطالبة احتراما لمعلمتها عند دخولها.
waqafati ṭ-ṭālibatu ḥtirāman li-muʿallimatihā ʿinda dukhūlihā.
The student stood out of respect for her teacher when the teacher entered.
The full parse is: perfect وقفتْ is the intentional action and verbal governor; nominative الطالبةُ is its agent; indefinite accusative احترامًا is the motive maṣdar; لمعلمتها is the maṣdar's prepositional complement, naming the person respected; عند دخولها locates the event in time. The student is both the one who stands and the one who feels respect. This shared-agent relation makes the bare accusative natural.
وقفت الطالبة لتظهر احترامها لمعلمتها.
waqafati ṭ-ṭālibatu li-tuẓhira ḥtirāmahā li-muʿallimatihā.
The student stood to show her respect for her teacher. (Explicit purpose-clause paraphrase.)
The clause states an intended result: standing will display respect. Purpose لـ governs subjunctive تظهرَ. The two sentences are close, but not identical: احترامًا presents respect itself as the motive; لتظهر احترامها presents displaying that respect as the goal.
Shared agent and shared occasion
Traditional descriptions require the motive and main action to share their agent and time. Contemporary usage confirms the practical value of that test even where grammarians differ over edge cases. A person refrains from fear, apologizes from consideration, or acts from a desire: the same intentional participant owns both the act and the motive.
اختصرت المديرة عرضها تقديرا لوقت المشاركين.
ikhtaṣarati l-mudīratu ʿarḍahā taqdīran li-waqti l-mushārikīn.
The director shortened her presentation out of consideration for the participants' time.
تقديرًا is simultaneous as a motive, not a later event. Its lexical complement is لوقت المشاركين. The director is both the person shortening the presentation and the person showing consideration.
امتنعت المؤسسة عن نشر الأسماء حماية لخصوصية المشاركين.
imtanaʿati l-muʾassasatu ʿan nashri l-ʾasmāʾi ḥimāyatan li-khuṣūṣiyyati l-mushārikīn.
The institution refrained from publishing the names to protect the participants' privacy. (Formal.)
This is a productive formal pattern: the institution's concern to protect privacy motivates its deliberate refusal to publish. English naturally chooses an infinitive, but Arabic has packaged حماية as an accusative noun.
The shared-time condition does not mean that the goal must already be achieved. It means that the motive operates at the time of the intentional act. Actual future consequences can remain uncertain.
Bare indefinite and annexed realizations
The canonical bare form is indefinite and shows tanwīn fatḥ when connected: احترامًا، رغبةً، خوفًا، حرصًا. A following adjective agrees with it in indefiniteness and accusative case.
خفضت الشركة الأسعار رغبة صادقة في توسيع قاعدة العملاء.
khaffaḍati sh-sharikatu l-ʾasʿāra raghbatan ṣādiqatan fī tawsīʿi qāʿidati l-ʿumalāʾ.
The company lowered prices out of a genuine desire to expand its customer base. (Formal.)
The adjective صادقةً agrees with motive noun رغبةً, not with feminine nominative الشركةُ. The prepositional phrase في توسيع... completes the meaning of the desire.
The motive maṣdar can also be the first term of an iḍāfa. It remains accusative but loses tanwīn because construct heads never take it.
تراجعت الشركة عن المشروع خشية ارتفاع التكاليف.
tarājaʿati sh-sharikatu ʿani l-mashrūʿi khashyata rtifāʿi t-takālīf.
The company withdrew from the project for fear that costs would rise. (Formal.)
Accusative construct head خشيةَ is the motive. Genitive ارتفاعِ completes the iḍāfa, and التكاليفِ is in turn the genitive participant of the rise. There is no tanwīn on خشيةَ, but that absence does not make it non-accusative.
An attached possessive can similarly make the motive definite and identify its experiencer:
أجلت اللجنة التصويت حرصها على استكمال المشاورات.
ʾajjalati l-lajnatu t-taṣwīta ḥirṣahā ʿalā stikmāli l-mushāwarāt.
The committee postponed the vote out of its concern to complete the consultations. (Formal, compact.)
Definite accusative حرصها has no tanwīn and carries a suffix referring back to اللجنة. This compact annexed pattern is grammatical, but many contemporary editors would prefer حرصًا منها على... or من أجل استكمال... for faster processing.
The prepositional alternatives لـ and من أجل
An explicit preposition turns the maṣdar into a genitive complement. Purpose لـ is concise and highly productive; من أجل makes the purposive relation unmistakable and works well with complex noun phrases.
سافر الطبيب إلى القرية لعلاج المرضى.
sāfara ṭ-ṭabību ʾilā l-qaryati li-ʿilāji l-marḍā.
The doctor traveled to the village to treat the patients.
Genitive علاجِ follows لـ. Treatment is a practical intended activity, not merely an internal feeling, so the explicit purpose phrase is more natural than bare accusative علاجًا here.
أنشأت البلدية ممرا جديدا من أجل تسهيل وصول ذوي الإعاقة.
ʾanshaʾati l-baladiyyatu mamarran jadīdan min ʾajli tashīli wuṣūli dhawī l-ʾiʿāqa(h).
The municipality created a new passage to facilitate access for people with disabilities. (Formal.)
من أجل governs genitive تسهيلِ, which heads a nested event phrase. The construction remains clear even without pronounced endings and is therefore common in administrative and policy prose.
The bare and prepositional forms can sometimes alternate with little change in truth conditions:
أوقفت الشركة الخدمة مؤقتا حرصا على سلامة المستخدمين.
ʾawqafati sh-sharikatu l-khidmata muʾaqqatan ḥirṣan ʿalā salāmati l-mustakhdimīn.
The company temporarily suspended the service out of concern for users' safety.
أوقفت الشركة الخدمة مؤقتا من أجل حماية المستخدمين.
ʾawqafati sh-sharikatu l-khidmata muʾaqqatan min ʾajli ḥimāyati l-mustakhdimīn.
The company temporarily suspended the service in order to protect users.
The first foregrounds concern as motive; the second foregrounds protection as intended result. Choosing between them is a semantic decision, not a competition between an “advanced” and a “basic” form.
When agents differ, use a clause
A bare purpose accusative cannot transparently encode two independent subjects. If one participant performs the main action so that another participant will act or undergo a result, use كي/لكي, purpose لـ + subjunctive, or another explicit clause.
فتحت الموظفة النافذة كي يدخل الهواء إلى الغرفة.
fataḥati l-muwaẓẓafatu n-nāfidhata kay yadkhula l-hawāʾu ʾilā l-ghurfa(h).
The employee opened the window so that air could enter the room.
The employee opens, but nominative الهواءُ is the subject of subjunctive يدخلَ. A bare noun such as دخولًا would not by itself tell the reader whose entry is intended.
أرسلت الوزارة دليلا مبسطا لكي يفهم المواطنون الإجراءات الجديدة.
ʾarsalati l-wizāratu dalīlan mubassaṭan li-kay yafhama l-muwāṭinūna l-ʾijrāʾāti l-jadīda(h).
The ministry sent a simplified guide so that citizens would understand the new procedures.
The agents differ: the ministry sends; citizens understand. لكي explicitly introduces that second proposition and governs subjunctive يفهمَ. See Purpose Clauses with كي، لكي، لـ، حتى for the full mood patterns.
Motive, cause, and intended result
These categories overlap in real communication, but their centers differ:
| Construction | Core question | Typical example |
|---|---|---|
| Bare purpose accusative | What motive moved the agent? | صمت احترامًا للمتحدث |
| بسبب + noun | What circumstance caused the event? | تأخر بسبب الازدحام |
| لـ / من أجل + maṣdar | What goal is the action directed toward? | سافر للعلاج |
| كي / لكي + subjunctive | What proposition is intended to become true? | شرح لكي يفهموا |
Weather, mechanical failure, and other non-volitional circumstances are causes, not the acting participant's motives. تأخرت الرحلة بسبب الضباب is natural; bare ضبابًا cannot become a purpose accusative merely because fog answers English “why?”
The cognate accusative is a different maṣdar relation
Both this construction and the cognate accusative use an accusative maṣdar, but the lexical relation differs. The cognate accusative repeats the event's root; the purpose accusative names its reason.
شكر المتحدث الحضور شكرا صادقا تقديرا لدعمهم.
shakara l-mutaḥaddithu l-ḥuḍūra shukran ṣādiqan taqdīran li-daʿmihim.
The speaker thanked the audience sincerely in appreciation of their support.
شكرًا صادقًا restates and characterizes شكر: cognate accusative. تقديرًا supplies the speaker's motive: purpose accusative. Their shared case does not merge their governors or semantic roles.
A formal-genre example
قررت الهيئة تأجيل إطلاق المنصة حرصا على حماية بيانات المستخدمين، ومن أجل منح الفريق التقني وقتا كافيا لاستكمال اختبارات الأمان.
qarrarati l-hayʾatu taʾjīla ʾiṭlāqi l-minaṣṣati ḥirṣan ʿalā ḥimāyati bayānāti l-mustakhdimīna, wa-min ʾajli manḥi l-farīqi t-tiqniyyi waqtan kāfiyan li-stikmāli khtibārāti l-ʾamān.
The authority decided to postpone the platform's launch out of concern to protect user data and in order to give the technical team enough time to complete security testing. (Formal policy statement.)
Accusative حرصًا presents the authority's motive. Coordinated من أجل منحِ explicitly presents a practical goal, inside which الفريقِ is the genitive recipient participant of the maṣdar and وقتًا is its accusative object. The sentence chooses two structures because “concern” and “granting time” do different semantic work.
Common Mistakes
Copying an English infinitive as a bare noun
❌ سافرت تعلم اللغة العربية.
Incorrect for “I traveled to learn Arabic”—bare تعلم is not a clearly licensed motive accusative here and can be read as a verb.
✅ سافرت لتعلم اللغة العربية في الجامعة.
sāfartu li-taʿallumi l-lughati l-ʿarabiyyati fī l-jāmiʿa(h).
I traveled to learn Arabic at the university.
Using a noun that is not the agent's motive
❌ تأخرت الطائرة ضبابا كثيفا.
Incorrect—dense fog is an external cause, not a motive experienced by an intentional airplane agent.
✅ تأخرت الطائرة بسبب ضباب كثيف قرب المطار.
taʾakhkharati ṭ-ṭāʾiratu bisababi ḍabābin kathīfin qurba l-maṭār.
The plane was delayed because of dense fog near the airport.
Assigning objecthood from position
❌ أوقفت الشركة الخدمة حماية للمستخدمين.
Incorrect analysis if حماية is called a second direct object because it follows الخدمة; it names the company's motive and must be parsed separately.
✅ أوقفت الشركة الخدمة حماية لبيانات المستخدمين.
ʾawqafati sh-sharikatu l-khidmata ḥimāyatan li-bayānāti l-mustakhdimīn.
The company stopped the service to protect users' data.
Presenting the bare accusative as the only neutral choice
قدمت الطلب ابتغاء الحصول على الموافقة.
qaddamtu ṭ-ṭalaba btighāʾa l-ḥuṣūli ʿalā l-muwāfaqa(h).
I submitted the application seeking to obtain approval. (Grammatical elevated formal or literary wording.)
✅ قدمت الطلب من أجل الحصول على الموافقة.
qaddamtu ṭ-ṭalaba min ʾajli l-ḥuṣūli ʿalā l-muwāfaqa(h).
I submitted the application in order to obtain approval. (Neutral formal MSA.)
Key Takeaways
- The purpose accusative is an accusative maṣdar naming the motive for an intentional action, normally with a shared agent and shared occasion.
- The canonical form is indefinite; an annexed or suffixed motive remains accusative but loses tanwīn.
- لـ and من أجل take genitive nominal complements and are often clearer for practical goals in contemporary prose.
- When the intended result has its own subject, use a purpose clause such as كي/لكي + subjunctive.
- A motive is not any answer to “why”: external causes favor بسبب, while cognate maṣdars characterize the event rather than explain its reason.
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- Adverbial AccusativesB1 — Distinguish the major accusative adjunct families: time, place, manner, specification, exception, and the absolute object.
- The Maṣdar: Verbal Noun OverviewA1 — Understand how Arabic maṣdars name events, behave as nouns, and preserve the participants of an underlying action.
- Maṣdar plus Iḍāfa ArgumentsB1 — Express the doer and object of an Arabic verbal noun while keeping case, definiteness, and meaning clear.
- The Cognate AccusativeB2 — Use the Arabic cognate accusative to emphasize an event, describe its manner, count its occurrences, and understand fixed expressions with an omitted verb.
- Purpose Clauses with كي، لكي، لِـ، حتىB2 — Express intended outcomes with كي، لكي، purpose لِـ, and prospective حتى while forming the governed subjunctive accurately.
- Cause Clauses with لأنّ، إذ، بما أنّ، بسببB2 — Choose among finite and nominal cause expressions while keeping the case, mood, information status, and punctuation of each construction clear.